Party Revolt Threatens Berlusconi's Conservative Reign

An open rebellion within Silvio Berlusconi's conservative party threatens his imperial grip on a movement he has led for two decades, as dozens of its lawmakers are poised to break away into a parliamentary faction of their own.

ROME—An open rebellion within Silvio Berlusconi's conservative party threatens his imperial grip on a movement he has led for two decades, as dozens of its lawmakers are poised to break away into a parliamentary faction of their own.

The conservative leader and billionaire media mogul was forced on Wednesday to withdraw his bid to pull apart Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta's ruling coalition after a group of key lieutenants balked and threatened a split over Mr. Berlusconi's hard-line gambit.

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Afterward, Fabrizio Cicchitto, a former parliamentary whip for Mr. Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said he had filed a preliminary request to set up a new caucus in the lower legislative chamber with at least a dozen of the party's members. A similar effort is under way in the Senate.

The revolt marks the first open challenge to the 77-year-old Mr. Berlusconi's reign over a party he has ruled as its founder, financier and public face for so long. It also throws into question his future influence in Italy's often-fraught political scene and the outlook for its conservative movement. Until now, Mr. Berlusconi's dominance over center-right Italian politics has prevented any real heirs to emerge.

All eyes are now on Angelino Alfano, a 42-year-old former Berlusconi loyalist, who led the rebellion to thwart Mr. Berlusconi's bid and was the first among his top lieutenants to join the movement to establish a breakaway faction for party moderates.

Mr. Alfano is a surprise emerging leader of the breakaway group. Not only is he the deputy prime minister, but he is the only person Mr. Berlusconi—who often described him as almost a son—ever named party secretary.

His role has often been mocked—from both inside and outside the party—as being merely an executioner of Mr. Berlusconi's plans. As justice minister in 2008, he wrote the so-called Lodo Alfano law, which critics said was designed to shield the party leader from prosecution.

"Today a new leader was born, Angelino Alfano," said Giovanni Orsina, a professor of history at Rome's Luiss University, whose book, "The Right After Berlusconi," was published last year and will soon be available in English. "The new groups certify that the factions closer to Berlusconi don't count for the governing majority, which will notably limit Berlusconi's power," he said.

Mr. Letta needed around 20 senators to defect in Wednesday's confidence vote in Parliament, so if the new faction were to have that members, he could count, in theory, on winning a new confidence vote without having to rely on the votes of Mr. Berlusconi and his loyalists.

Still, while the rebels have protested against Mr. Berlusconi's autocratic style, they haven't signaled any intention to embark on a different policy path. "If they are not idiots, and some of them certainly are not, they must follow Berlusconi's stated positions, especially on taxation," Mr. Orsina said.

The government, so far, has been unable to find the €2.4 billion it needs to abolish an unpopular property tax on primary residences, an issue that conservatives have long made central to their electoral campaigns.

Whether the effort to form a new faction leads to a permanent parliamentary fixture—or possibly a revival of Italy's now defunct, centrist Christian Democratic Party, where most of the rebels started their political careers—remains uncertain.

"I'd be prudent about the new groups," said Alessandro Cattaneo, the 33-year-old conservative mayor of Pavia, who last year offered to run against Mr. Berlusconi in a primary before the conservative leader decided to campaign again as a candidate for prime minister instead.

More important, he said, the breakaway effort was a sign of more debate within the party.

"The issue is that, while I agree with Berlusconi that we should wash our dirty laundry at home, we do need a washing machine," he said. "You can't be a traitor if you have no way even to participate in decisions," he added.

The main aspirant to Mr. Berlusconi's position at the helm of Italy's conservative movement was Gianfranco Fini, a right-winger whose 2010 challenge led to his expulsion from the party and his effective retreat from the political arena. The party he set up later that year won less than 0.5% of the ballots cast in February's general election.

Speculation has recently mounted that Marina Berlusconi, Mr. Berlusconi's oldest daughter and chairwoman of the family holding company, might take up her father's mantle. But she has openly stated that she has no intention in entering politics.

Meanwhile, Mr. Berlusconi's challenge will be to find a way to still exert his formidable campaigning skills. A Senate committee is slated to decide on Friday whether he should be stripped of his Senate seat, following his conviction in August on tax-fraud charges. A final vote by the full Senate is expected around mid-October, by which time the conservative leader will also have to decide if he serves his one-year sentence under house arrest or doing community service.

The political crisis lasted long enough to rain on the majority of italians yet another taxation, namely a 1% VAT hike steering the country into more political and economic chaos...an attempt by the old satrap to bring fascism back from the grave. Maybe the government needed even more wealth in these times of precariousness.

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